The Internet pipes are filling up with video

According to Cisco’s report published yesterday, 90% of consumer Internet will be video by 2019. And Canadian company Sandvine’s report issued today shows us how we’re getting there. The chart above shows that on North American fixed line networks, 69% of all peak period downstream web traffic is “Real Time Entertainment”, up from 64% a year ago. At five percent per year growth, 90% by 2019 looks like a no brainer.

Some of that real time entertainment traffic is kitten videos, of course. But not the majority: the single largest driver of Internet traffic in prime time is Netflix, representing 36.5% of all bits, up from 34.9% only six months ago. That is a compound annual growth of over nine percent.

As more people watch over the top video services (Netflix, but others too) for more hours and at higher definitions, the future is clear. The Internet of 2020 won’t be about telemedicine, distance education, or the connected devices.